Trying to perpetuate alarmist climate “science”

Several months ago a brief furor erupted when the New York Times leaked the final draft of the upcoming Climate Science Special Report (CSSR), an extremely alarmist rendition of what is supposedly happening with Earth’s climate. Dangerous climate change and weather events, the report says, are due to mankind’s use of fossil fuels to create and maintain modern living standards and to the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that result from that energy use.

The CSSR is being prepared by the federal Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and has been in the works for several years, mostly under Obama and still staffed by diehard alarmists.

The USGCRP consists of the 13 federal agencies that conduct and analyze climate science and supposedly “consensus” views on the topic. The Times and other news stories speculated that one of the agencies, especially the EPA under Administrator Scott Pruitt, might block the CSSR. This has not happened, and the Report is now scheduled for release next month.

The CSSR is far more alarmist than any IPCC report. Most other USGCRP reports have been, as well, thanks in particular to NOAA. The new CSSR will be an official Federal report, which will give it more credibility than it deserves.

Even worse, the Report is slated to be Volume I of the National Climate Assessment (NCA), which is due out late next year. The NCA is mandated by law, which gives the CSSR even more status as federal policy.

It would be ironic indeed if the skeptical Trump Administration were to simply issue this alarmist report as federal policy on climate change science. In fact it would be tragic, a major defeat for climate realism and sound science.

Thankfully, there is a simple way to turn this looming defeat into a major victory. The solution is to do an official Red Team critique of the CSSR.

The Red Team concept has been under discussion for some time now, including being endorsed by EPA Administrator Pruitt and Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Some useful background and online discussion are available on Judith Curry’s manmade climate chaos skeptics blog here and here.

The unduly and unscientifically alarmist CSSR cannot be put back into its political bottle. But it is the perfect vehicle for critical analysis and robust criticism, precisely because of its radical alarmist nature. Most importantly, this criticism would be official, which will make climate skepticism official U.S. policy.

Mind you, the CSSR is over 600 pages long, so its rebuttal would not be a trivial exercise. On the other hand, only the most central claims need to be refuted. In particular there are a number of cases of so-called “high confidence” in important assertions that are actually nothing more than highly speculative alarmist dogma.

This is especially true of the groundless attribution of human activities causing bad weather. The Red Team critique must be comprehensive, clear and coherent if it is to be effective. Properly done, that should not be a problem, however.

Making a detailed critique and rebuttal of the CSSR official would go a long way toward putting federal policy on the right track, which is that the scientific debate is very real and far from being resolved. Costly, draconian actions like hefty carbon taxes and forced lifestyle changes are simply not justified. In particular there is no scientific basis for EPA’s finding that CO2 emissions “endanger human health and welfare.” Indeed, the clear benefits of carbon-based fuels and plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide are tens or hundreds of times greater than any (highly speculative) costs that might be attributed to them.

There is no need for the Red Team to break new scientific ground. It is just a matter of clearly stating what is already known. In fact simply and visibly starting an official Red Team exercise will go a long way toward blunting the rampant CSSR alarmism. B

However, this must be done very shortly after the CSSR is officially released. If not, then the CSSR is likely to become the official US standard bearer for the alarmist version of climate science. That would be a truly tragic outcome.

It is no accident that the CSSR is coming out now. This is a deliberate attempt by the climate alarmists entrenched in the federal research agencies to defy the skepticism of the Trump administration. It must not succeed.

David Wojick is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science and public policy. He has a PhD in analytic philosophy of science and mathematical logic, and focuses his research on unpacking the structure of complex issues.

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I agree there needs to be a reckoning of this report if it’s biased and volatile as presented here. It should be stopped until an official ….. read government ….. assessment. There are still many parts of the swamp that are stinking up our daily lives.

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October 21, 2017 10:33 am

Pop Piasa

Ever since the election they have doubled down on the climate change mindbending, after saying little during the campaign. I think that it was planned from the gitgo, and is now their only toe-hold to regain power. The progressive socialist movement took over the Dem party and was poised to take control of the US, even though around half the population didn’t see it. Thankfully, HRC was an abrasive enough personality that folks used Trump to vote against her, putting the “settled science” in double jeopardy.
Where it goes from here is largely dependent upon what percentage of the public are indoctrinated by the liberal-owned media vs. free and critical thinkers.

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October 21, 2017 2:26 pm

Emilio Reyes

Let’s stop those making millions out of scaring people crying wolf!!! where there is nor even a puppy dog they can show.

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October 22, 2017 9:28 am

Steve Case

In case you were wondering, the budget for the Global Change Research Program is $2.3 Billion in 2017, $2.6 Billion in 2016 and $2.5 Billion in 2015 Link:http://www.globalchange.gov/about/budget
and going back in time the numbers in $Billions were:
2013….2.427
2012….2.642
2011….2.561
2010….2.122
2009….2.080
2008….1.864
2007….1.825
2006….1.691
2005….1.865
2004….1.975
2003….1.766
2002….1.667
2001….1.728
2000….1.687
1999….1.657
1998….1.677
1997….1.656
1996….1.654
1995….1.760
1994….1.444
1993….1.326
1992….1.110
1991….0.954
1990….0.659
1989….0.134

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October 21, 2017 10:33 am

LdB

It’s not as much as I thought it would be, now go and look at the military budget. If you stopped getting involved in conflicts you could save a fortune. I am disappointed you guys seem to be getting back into Afghanistan I don’t understand that given Trumps views.

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October 21, 2017 10:48 am

F. Leghorn

“Trump’s views? ” His “views” begin and end with “America first”. Defeating radical Islamists (who want us dead) go right along with that view.

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October 21, 2017 11:15 am

Steve Case

The biggest part of the budget is Social Security. Should Warren Buffet begetting a social security chek every month?

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October 21, 2017 11:17 am

Curious George

“If you stopped getting involved in conflicts you could save a fortune.” Not for long. Pretty soon someone would take your fortune away by force.

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October 21, 2017 11:22 am

WR

I don’t know where you hail from, but wherever it is, perhaps if your country did more to combat the thugs, depots and zealots of the world, we wouldn’t have to.

Personally, I would love to see Trump pull out of Europe and let them fend for themselves. Europe has been nothing but antagonistic towards the US economically, diplomatically, and militarily the last few years. Time for us to cut bait. We can then focus our military budget on real threats to our national security, instead of enabling Europe’s social welfare state and minuscule military funding.

If Europe had been willing to get back into Germany in the late 30s when Hitler began to test their resolve, WWII would never have happened. Sometimes a small conflict now can prevent a gigantic conflict later. Appeasement and avoidance always make things worse in the long run.

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October 21, 2017 12:12 pm

LdB

Curious George you have enough nukes to blow up the planet what 9 times or something. You have them across countless countries, on ships and subs .. exactly how is anyone going to take all that by force. That is almost as funny as the CAGW people.

USA has had to stop and think seriously about North Korea and what an armed conflict may look like and your arsenal is hundreds of times bigger. Do you really think any country would be stupid enough to try and take USA.

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October 21, 2017 12:15 pm

Ellen

LdB — “Do you really think any country would be stupid enough to try and take USA.”

Very few countries are stupid enough to do something like that. Quite a few are fanatical enough to try. “Reason” only works on reasonable people.

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October 21, 2017 12:34 pm

Snowleopard

I’ve many acquaintances who have worked in intel or fought in Afghanistan. They say very little and not usually for attribution. The puzzle pieces collected seem to resolve into this:

“We” are mostly in Afghanistan to save the black ops boys on the cost of mercenaries to protect their cash flow from the opium fields. (Then Major) Ollie North set this up (drugs for arms) long ago with OBL to help kick out the Russians, and once that succeeded the black cash was too much to give up. The Taliban shut it down and that was not tolerated, thus the invasion. USA taxpayers have been footing the protection bill ever since.

This cannot be “proven” but…..Ask any ex-sandbox trooper how long it took to get clearance to attack identified “Islamic terrorists” in Afghanistan….and who is it that can fly or ship into USA whatever they want without inspection?

Likely each new president is given a classified briefing on what he may not oppose publicly. This might explain (rather than dishonesty) why some things promised in the campaign don’t happen.

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October 21, 2017 12:36 pm

TA

The U.S. never left Afghanistan. Trump is just streamlining operations over there. Like he did against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Trump says since we are already involved in Afghanistan, we need to do the job right this time.

The neutron star in the room that everyone is missing in this sub-thread is that the US is already being taken over. Your mortal enemy and principal antagonist is Islam and while you desperately fight it for some foreign patch of desert scrub its soldiers are strolling right in through your front door.

It isn’t about carriers and subs. Islam is screaming in your face that they will conquer you with the womb. And that is precisely what they are doing each and every day with their polygamy and prodigious birth rate. The terrorists are simply the impatient ones.

The takeover of Europe is already well advanced and will complete in a couple of generations. The terrorists operate daily at will and even when known are not neutralised. The same thing is happening in Australasia and Canada spurred on by brain-dead virtue-signallers like the inconceivably stupid Trudeau.

It is happening in the US too with a sort of ghastly slo-mo car crash inevitability and no one is lifting a finger to stop it. All of us are watching the coils of the most evil ideology to ever plague humanity slowly throttling the West while we pretend it isn’t happening because the reality of stopping it is too awful to contemplate.

The only people who resist the politically correct cultural suicide by Islam are the Visegrad countries and they are now under attack by the Chancellor of Germany for having the temerity to want to keep their own culture – and their heads.

@ mod. The Visegrad countries or V4 as they are commonly referred to since there are four of them are the former Soviet bloc countries of:

Poland.
Czech Republic.
Hungary.
Slovakia.

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October 21, 2017 4:09 pm

catweazle666

“The Visegrad countries or V4 as they are commonly referred to since there are four of them”

Likely to be joined very soon by Austria and the Czech Republic.

The unprecedented success of the AfD in Germany and the problems Merkel is having forming a coalition – possibly leading to a second General Election in which the AfD are likely to do better still – must also be taken into account.

As to an Islamic takeover, don’t forget, Islam acquired a great deal of Europe between AD711 and the 16th Century, but was repulsed, it’s been done before, it can be done again.

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October 21, 2017 4:51 pm

MarkW

Unfortunately, in the real world, problems don’t go away just because you get real good at ignoring them.
Both Afghanistan and Iraq were won, until Obama surrendered.

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October 21, 2017 7:02 pm

MarkW

Steve Case, if Warren Buffet paid into SS, then he is entitled to a check every month.

Unfortunately there are way too many people who actually believe that the way to solve every problem is to steal even more from the rich.

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October 21, 2017 7:03 pm

MarkW

LdB, you are assuming that anyone has the guts to go nuclear for anything short of a nuclear first strike.

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October 21, 2017 7:05 pm

MarkW

Greg, out here in the real world, you rarely get a choice between angels and demons. Most of the time it’s between a bad guy and a worse guy.
Of course if you never leave the liberal happy land where all you need to do is sing Kum By Ya and all the world’s problems melt away, then it’s easy to believe that the US is the source of all the world’s problems.

By the way, it’s a complete lie that anyone had to swear allegiance to Israel in order to get aid.
Your blatant anti-semitism is not appreciated here.

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October 21, 2017 7:08 pm

Louis Hooffstetter

Steve Case, Tom in Florida and Mark W are correct. If Warren Buffet paid into the Social Security system (for 50+ years), then he is certainly entitled to a monthly check. But instead of asking whether or not he deserves what he paid for, and the government promised him (for 50+ years) instead, ask why is the Social Security system nearly bankrupt?

It’s nearly bankrupt because politicians squandered the money on wars and programs to get themselves re-elected.

Don’t blame the rich for this crisis. Blame the politicians who stole the money and wasted it.

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October 21, 2017 8:02 pm

Luc Ozade

cephus0 October 21, 2017 at 3:09 pm

It isn’t about carriers and subs. Islam is screaming in your face that they will conquer you with the womb. And that is precisely what they are doing each and every day with their polygamy and prodigious birth rate. The terrorists are simply the impatient ones.

That’s a chilling observation, Cephus, nevertheless it’s one which I wouldn’t care to refute – given the evidence all around.

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October 21, 2017 9:39 pm

Eamon Butler

Maybe not as much as you thought, but every dime wasted on this could have been used for better and more worthy purposes. It’s an obscene waste of money when there are real issues of concern, like medical research and health, Education and of course poverty. I would include security in this too, for as long as there are threats to that, there is an unfortunate necessity to counter them. The belief that this money will somehow give us a an improved version of a conceptual Global climate, sometime in the future, is pure nonsense. Wars, illnesses, poverty etc. might not exist in Utopia, but the real world has all of these, and climate will continue to do what it does.

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October 22, 2017 3:24 am

Kozlowski

Comment from: Greg October 21, 2017 at 1:58 pm

“Talking of the zealots, remind me why citizens in Dickinshon Texas need to swear allegiance to Israel in order to apply for hurricane Harvey disaster relief.”

I found that hard to believe so I Googled it. And it is in fact true. Well, sort of, barely. No one has to ‘swear allegiance to Israel’ – they only need to certify they are not participating in BDS activities.

It relates to the BDS movement, to Boycott, Divest & Sanctions against Israel for all sorts of issues, imaginary and not.

The city attorney believed he was required to put that clause in the aid agreements because of a law that was passed by the state of Texas. Pretty stupid IMHO by anti-BDS activists. The BDS nonsense will go away on its own if ignored. Other than brainwashed college students and their ink, few, if any, Americans care about the issue. But making things like this part of Texas law will backfire spectacularly. Americans, Texans particularly, don’t like to be told what to do.

Who decides on the budget? Can you just defund it to drain the mindless swamp.

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October 21, 2017 10:49 am

John M

Legal Mandate
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was established by Presidential Initiative in 1989 and mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act (GCRA) of 1990 to develop and coordinate “a comprehensive and integrated United States research program which will assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.”

It consults with the White House, a Congressional Subcommittee, and 13 Federal Agencies.

Proper Due-diligence and objective oversight is mandatory. Alarmists should be given pink slips.

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October 21, 2017 10:58 am

Edwin

Government budgets are hard to read even if that is your job and I will bet that this listing is but a small percentage of what is actually being spent. Appreciate from World War II until the end of the Cold War in and around 1989 a lot of money went into weather, climate and oceanographic research in support of Defense Department strategic planning. During WWII we had determined that predicting the weather was strategically and tactically important, e.g., D-Day landing and typhoons in the Pacific. When we made submarines one of our nuclear triad legs money for oceanography grew even larger. Can’t hide a “boomer” without knowing the thermal structure of the ocean nor can a hunter killer sub find the other guys “boomer.” There was no single budget line item for any of this. The appropriations were “washed” through other agencies above and beyond DOD, through such programs as the National Science Foundation, research grants through NOAA, USFWS, any of the alphabet national intelligence agencies. I will guarantee that AGW research is funded in an analogous fashion. Remember back under the Obama Administration with DOD announced that CAGW was the worst threat the country faced. Though I always wonder whether some wiser folks in DOD were saying heck yes, CAGW is a major risk because of who is promoting the idea. I have not been asked to review a federal science budget in decades. They didn’t like the comments I gave to those asking me to review the budgets. One thing I did learn is that they can hide a lot in the budget that even skilled budget geeks have a hard time finding.

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October 21, 2017 11:46 am

richard verney

To me even the €0.134 billion (which was being spent in 1989) seems a lot of money to waste on what is and has always been a non issue.

This planet is both way too cold, and this planet also has way too little CO2. Upping the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is obviously a good thing (as can now clearly be seen by the fact that the planet is greening at a rate faster than man is deforesting). If by some happy coincident more CO2 leads to a warming then that really would be a win win scenario.

It is absolutely no coincidence that most bio diversity is seen in warm (and wet) climes, and least bio diversity in cold (and arid) climes. It is no coincidence that all the large land animals (elephant, hippo, rhino, giraffe) are seen in warm climes, and it is no coincidence that those animal found in the arctic migrate south in winter, and those that do not bury themselves under ground and go into a deep catatonic sleep, many of which never wake up again when the snow melts and warmth reappears. The polar bear can only survive in the Arctic because it does not hunt off the land (where mammals are generally very small and cannot support the needs of a large predator) but rather from the sea.

It is no coincidence that long ago, when it was some 10 or more degrees warmer than today (the time of the dinosaurs) that animals (and insects) were able to grow to such size.

It is no coincidence that the advancement in civilisation and technology, the bronze age, iron age, are warm climate related.

Everything we know about life on this planet both now and in the past, confirms that there would be no problem if this planet were to warm a few degrees, and such warmth would benefit not only ourselves, but the biosphere in general.

Finally, do not overlook that the reason why we wear clothes is not for modesty, but because the planet is too cold. The reason why we build buildings and fit central heating is because the planet is too cold for us as a species. In fact there are only a few places on this planet where we, as a species, can live naturally (ie., which are our natural habitat as a species) such as tropical rain forests, the plains of Ethiopia, Sudan and Australia etc. It is only our ability to adapt ourselves and our environment that has enabled us, as a species, to inhabit and colonise all parts of the globe, although Antarctica and the deep Arctic have been all but too challenging,

Our one particular skill is adaptability. This is what we do best, and we should simply adapt to whatever climate the future holds. It will cause no insurmountable problems for us. Everything else is simply and obviously a waste of time, effort and resources.

I do not think that public knows how much money is wasted/spent on climate matters. Trillions of dollars has been spent, Germany alone has spent almost 1 trillion on wind and solar. Trump should simply detail to the public what colossal sums are being spent and how little return has resulted. Not only has the science not advanced since the 1970s, wind and solar still amount to only about 1% of global energy. What a waste, what a fiasco.

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October 22, 2017 3:18 am

Tom Halla

There are still a lot of leeches and muskrats in the swamp. Trump is being very slow in replacing holdovers.

the scheister, blood-sucking lawyers already have commercials for a class-action lawsuit. One that will get the claimants a few pennies and themselves multi-millions (if they can scrounge enough idiots together for a jury, which shouldn’t be all that hard)

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October 21, 2017 11:43 am

PiperPaul

Now that the establishment of truth via assertion and repetition (with massive assistance from the MSM) has been accepted, anything is possible!

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October 21, 2017 2:14 pm

D B H

Sorry Pat, but you are wrong…..we all know that EVERYTHING causes cancer. (sarc)
Well, it seems to, according to the ‘facts’ and ‘papers’ we see trotted out of a regular basis.
Oh, and I just used the equivalent of Roundup yesterday – twice, I wonder now how long the period will be for me to get cancer?
And, which cancer?
I wonder if cancer existed before the creation of Roundup?

(By the why, for those trolls wanting to jump on my rather jaundiced view – my father died of cancer, as did my brother in law, and a good friend…and I’ve had a few chunks of me cut out, as has my mother…yet still see little ’cause’ for alarm about using Roundup or its ilk. Am I a denier then? You might think so, and thats your choice, but mine (and others) think differently)

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October 22, 2017 4:27 pm

JON R. SALMI

Any definitive statement about future climate is unscientific.

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October 21, 2017 10:40 am

LdB

I am sure time and climate will exist in the future, that is definitive and scientific.

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October 21, 2017 10:51 am

Thomas

I can definitively state, with strong scientific support, that it is highly likely Earth’s climate, one-hundred years from now, will be about the same as it is today, which is about the same as it was one-hundred years ago. : )

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October 21, 2017 11:47 am

Rod Everson

I hope you’re not tempting an asteroid collision or a massive eruption with that statement.

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October 22, 2017 7:54 am

RAH

If only government policy reflected the concerns of the majority of the citizens. Citizens never put climate change or even the environment near the top of their lists in the surveys. Those issues lay at or near the bottom of the lists in UN surveys, EU surveys, and US surveys. And yet, we see the constant bombardment and hype.

Gabro wrote:
“How did we do all that to the climate, cooling, warming and staying the same?”

Well you see Gabro, according to warmist fanatics, CO2 is the wonder molecule: As the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increases, it cools the world, then warms it, and then stands still. It’s a miracle!

No wonder the warmists want to curtail CO2 – it is making them crazy!

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October 21, 2017 8:34 pm

Wharfplank

All of these “authors” and “contributors” should be transferred immediately to study the weather in Antarctica, the Bering Islands, the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, and North Pole. For years.

“The World Health Organization’s cancer agency dismissed and edited findings from a draft of its review of the weedkiller glyphosate that were at odds with its final conclusion that the chemical probably causes cancer.”

If it doesn’t fit, ignor or change it.

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October 21, 2017 11:13 am

John F. Hultquist

“ The solution is to do an official Red Team critique of the CSSR.”

I realize “red team” has been used recently to mean something. I’m not sure what. To me and to many of us of a certain advanced age it means “communist” and the “USSR.”
Further, if you want anyone to pay attention, the critique should come out a week before the CSSR does; because appearing “very shortly after” the event is a guarantee that no one will notice.
An initial critique should also be short — 1 page summary, 3 simple charts, 6 pages text. Make this CSSR an Obama Administration document of no interest to the “Make America Great” era and you have a good chance of muting its intent.
Scott Adams and “the Donald” seem to have gotten the hang of “persuasion” by getting the media’s attention.
Catch up.

The idea of a “Red Team” (read communist) long critique (read-no one will) after the fact (read-not) is a useless exercise.

If this poc must be released, it must be released with a BIG BOLD DISCLAIMER on it!

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October 21, 2017 11:55 am

Latitude

“high confidence”… they have not gotten one prediction right

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October 21, 2017 12:33 pm

Ellen

In olden days, people said, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” I miss those simpler times.

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October 21, 2017 12:37 pm

Bubba Cow

so, where’s the red team? how is that going to happen?

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October 21, 2017 12:44 pm

Mike Bryant

I’m not tired of winning yet.

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October 21, 2017 1:16 pm

Rebel with a cause

We may only have three and a half more years to drain the swamp. If the libs get back in we will be back on the CAGW track, the Paris agreement will be re-enacted, coal and other fossil fuels will be replaced by wind and solar. Energy costs will skyrocket and the economy will go down the tubes. We will have lost the initiative. We desperately need 8 years of Trump and maybe 8 years of Pence to make any progress on draining the swamp. The libs demonizing of Trump may allow them to regain power. I am not a fan of Trump’s way of handling the Presidency but without him we can not win the CAGW battle unless the climate starts to cool significantly. A cooler world is not what we actually need.

The Libs will hurdle that without breaking stride and you know it. That is just moar climate change and that’s what they’ve been saying all along. And furthermore it’s worse than we ever thought! Look! It’s now causing wild oscillations from runaway warming to runaway cooling! They won’t ever give up on this political religion.

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October 21, 2017 3:25 pm

willhaas

Let us look at some of the science. CO2 is not an energy source so to cause warming it must act as an insulator. If adding CO2 to the atmosphere caused warming then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the torposphere but such has not happened. There is no realy evidence that adding CO2 to the atmosphere increases the atmopshere’s thermal insulating properties.

A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of the action of heat trapping gases with LWIR absorption bands. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass reduces cooling by convection. It is entirely a convective greenhouse effect. There is no radiant greenhouse effect associated with a real greenhouse. So too on Earth. Gravity in conjunction with the heat capacity of the atmosphere provides a convective greenhouse effect. As derived from first proncipals, the Earth’s convective greenhouse keeps the surface of the Earth on average 33 degrees warmer than it would be without the effect. 33 degrees C is what has been calculated based on first principals and 33 degrees C is what has been observed. Additional warming caused by a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed. The convective greenhouse effect has been observed on all planets in the solar system with thick atmospheres. A radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed anywhere in the solar system. The AGW conjecture is based on the existance of a radiant greenhouse effect caused by trace gasses with LWIR absorption bands but such a greenhouse effect has not been observed anywhere in the solar system. The radiant greenhouse effect is science fiction. Hence the AGW conjecture is sceince fiction.

For those who still believe in a radiant greenhouse effect, initial calculations came up with a value for the climate sensivity of CO2 of 1.2 Degrees C for a doubling of CO2. This number does not include any feedbacks. One researcher has found that these initial calculations fail to take into consideration that the doubling of the amount of CO2 will cause a slight but very significant decrease in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere whidh decreases the climate seisnvity of CO2 by more than a factor of 20. Taking this into consideration yields a climate sensivity of CO2 os less than .06 degrees C.

The AGW conjecture assumes that H2O provides a positive feedback because CO2 warming would cause additional H2O to enter the atmosphere which in turn causes more warming because H2O is also a greenhouse gas with LWIR absorption bands. They are not sure of exactly what the amplification factor is but a good nominal amplification value would be 3. But they have neglected the fact the besides being the primary greenhouse gas, H2O is a major coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere moving heat energy from the Earth’s surface which is mostly water to where clouds form via the heat of vaporation. According to many models, more heat energy is moved by H2O via the heat of vaporation then by both LWIR absorption band radiation and convection combined. The H2O cooling effect is exemplified by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly lower than the dry lapse rate. So instead of a positive feedback, H2O provides a negative feedback so a better estimate of H2O’s amplifaction factor would be instead of 3, the factor should be 1/3 resulting in a climate sensivity of CO2 of less than .02 degrees C which is trival.

willhass….
…
If you wish to observe a radiant greenhouse effect, spend a night in the desert. When the sun goes down, the air temperature drops really really fast due to infrared emissions from the ground, through the clear sky out into space. Now, at the same latitude, visit a place that has high humidity. When the sun goes down on a cloudy night, you’ll notice that the air temperature does not drop fast.
…
Why does this happen?
…
It’s because the clouds and water vapor in the air are absorbing and re-emitting the infrared radiation. Some of this re-emitted IR is striking the surface, and slowing down the drop off in air temperature.
….
You don’t even need thermometers to measure this, just talk to people that go camping.

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October 21, 2017 3:02 pm

Earthling2

The air temperature doesn’t even have to decline that rapidly for the effect to be apparent. Consider black ice on wet pavement at (4 C) 39-40 Fahrenheit on a clear night. Or the reason why your skin feels so cold in the desert after sunset, is the your body too is radiating heat away to the universe/sky. Hypothermia can set in quickly at 40 degrees F under a clear sky especially if you already damp or wet. The same temperature under cloudy skies doesn’t feels so cold because your body isn’t radiating heat away as quickly as under a clear sky at the same temps. Frazzle ice also forms much quicker under clear skies, than cloudy skies, due to the same effect of radiation loss of the temperature of water.

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October 21, 2017 8:23 pm

Geoff Sherrington

CPP,
Some problems with your explanation. re-emitted IR.
Take the process further. After this re-emitted IR has struck the ground (or sea, mostly) it can raise its temperature, leading to more emission of IR to space or to a further cycle of re-emission. So you get this repetition of a cyclic process. Given that re-emission is said to be about 50% to space and gone then 50% back to the ground or sea, you can sum the effect of these cycles to show that all ends up in space after 10 or more re-emissions, more or less. It’s exponential, like math of decay of isotopes. If you are going to have any warming at all, you have to postulate that this 10 or so re-emission/emission cycles take a long time to complete, something like the residence time of CO2 in air. I do not think we see that. Then there is the complication of water and CO2 sharing the load.
Next, there is the further difficulty that incoming IR finds it hard to heat the ocean because it penetrates only sub-mm distances into water – some argue it causes cooling because it increases skin evaporation to increase.
The next problem is that people do not have a good grasp of the speed of molecular/photon interactions, the probability of a radiant process reducing elevated molecular energy rather than a simple transfer of momentum to abundant nitrogen and oxygen then conduction convection etc eventually to high altitude before radiation to space. I do not profess to know the fine detail of this because I have never seen a clear exposition of it, despite years of searching. Can I ask if you have? Geoff.

in short , ya’ll dropped the ball.
ya got the house, senate ,epa and the white house and you still cant stifle the truth.

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October 21, 2017 3:33 pm

ChrisDinBristol

This is a strange new meaning if the word “truth” that I wasn’t previously aware of . . .

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October 21, 2017 4:45 pm

AndyG55

You mean that they still can’t stifle the LIES and brain-washed mantra of the CAGW cult.

Yes Mosh, removing these LIES of the biggest scäm in history, and getting to the TRUTH, will take a while.

There still a very deep trough of money and anti-science fräüd to overcome.

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October 21, 2017 5:06 pm

Reg Nelson

What truth? The Climategate emails exposed this movement as nothing more than political propaganda.

That’s the truth, spoken in their own words and not disputed.

You’re delusional to believe anything otherwise — that is the whole cold truth.

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October 21, 2017 5:27 pm

MarkW

Poor Moshpit, he actually believes that the bureaucrats give a flying flip what the White House and Congress does.

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October 21, 2017 7:12 pm

Luc Ozade

Mosh:

… and you still cant stifle the truth.

And I had you down for being a reasoned and sensible fellow, willing to accept that which cannot be denied. I fear I made a grave error of judgement.

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October 21, 2017 9:48 pm

AndyG55

I’ve had mosh pinned as a low-end mercenary car-salesman type for ages. !

And he keeps proving it with his every post.

Anyone with low enough standards to employ him.

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October 22, 2017 1:35 am

catweazle666

“I’ve had mosh pinned as a low-end mercenary car-salesman type for ages. !”

Doubtful.
If he had to make a living selling cars, he’d have starved to death by now.

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October 22, 2017 4:30 pm

Eamon Butler

Isn’t that the whole point of the ”Red team” exercise? Isn’t that why the Alarmists would never suggest an honest critique of the assertions? I don’t know if the truth and lies will ever be separated, but it certainly won’t, with only one side being pushed down our collective throats.

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October 22, 2017 4:18 am

thallstd

I think we should give the agencies involved a chance to self-police, with the following caveat.

Every single claim in the report must be endorsed by at least one person, identified in the report. Any claim not endorsed will not be included in the report. After the report is issued, each and every claim will be challenged. Any claim found to lack scientific support or exaggerate certainty results in the endorser losing his or her job, being sued for fraud and being banned forever from any work in or for the government or funded by our taxes.

Give them a couple of months to review the report themselves with these caveats and it might end up being much less alarmist.

a totally fair and no-brainer policy.
I’ll just add : “all nails will be pulled out before being fired, sued and banned”.

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October 22, 2017 1:46 pm

Germonio

What would happen after the red team review? You would then have two potentially different views on
what the climate is doing and whether or not humans are partially responsible. Who gets to decide which
“team” is right? Either you have a third independent panel of experts who everybody agrees will decide or things will stay as they are with true believers on either side refusing to budge.

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October 21, 2017 4:34 pm

Reg Nelson

The Scientific Method decides.

If you claim that CO2 causes warming and for eighteen years it doesn’t happen, then your theory is has been falsified. That’s it. You’re wrong. That is how science works. End of story.

If you don’t understand that you don’t understand science.

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October 21, 2017 5:38 pm

Germonio

The scientific method doesn’t decide anything. It is a set of guidelines that people loosely adhere to when
doing science. And if it was that clear there would be no need for a “red team”. The author of the blog post is suggesting that a “red team” be formed to critique the forthcoming report. So someone will need to decide which of the two competing reports to believe and act on. Hence you need a third party or team to judge.

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October 21, 2017 6:12 pm

MarkW

Criticism of others work is part of the scientific process.
I’m not surprised that you didn’t know that.

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October 21, 2017 7:15 pm

Germonio

MarkW,
So if criticism is part of the process then what you are proposing would be that the “red team” will peer
review the report and then the “blue team” will issue an updated report. And what happens next?

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October 21, 2017 8:07 pm

AndyG55

“And what happens next?”

the blue team wilts under the weight of trying to keep up with the LIES and MIS-TRUTHS they have perpetrated,

and like all true leftists when held under the light, they run cowering back into the swamp where they came from.

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October 22, 2017 1:31 am

MarkW

The blue team defends their claims. If they can’t, then the red team wins.
Basic stuff, science has been built on this process since the days of Newton.

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October 22, 2017 2:58 pm

MarkW

The science gets to decide.
First off, little warming.
Secondly, what little warming exists is less than has occurred in the recent past without CO2 increases.
While CO2 has been rising monotonically, temperatures have gone up, gone down, and stayed the same for almost 2 decades.

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October 21, 2017 7:14 pm

Germonio

MarkW,
What does “the science gets to decide” actually mean? All major scientific societies and the majority of scientists agree that global warming is real and man-made so does that mean that science has decided?
There is no all knowing oracle that gets to decide only a collection of fallible individuals.

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October 21, 2017 8:10 pm

Roger Knights

The third-party decider or better evaluator might be a panel of distinguished retired or on-leave scientists with reputations for objectivity and honesty (and courage). They would make up the judges or jurors in a “science court” (Google for it) intended to give minorities a chance to cross-examine majority-view proponents. Its published / posted proceedings would tend to clarify the issues and debunk or undermine a certain percentage of “consensus” claims. Even if a majority of jurors decided in favor of the consensus position, the endorsement in whole or in part of the minority / contrarian view by a respectable number of jurors (say 20%) would mean that group-think “enforcers” could no longer utterly marginalize contrarians as mere 3% cranks who are best ignored in toto. This would drastically affect mass media treatment of contrarians. For example, the BBC would no longer have a basis for excluding contrarians from interviews on the topic. It Group-thinkers could no longer claim “the science is settled” and it would be “false balance” for the media to stage debates on the topic or give contrarians some space in news stories.

Thus, even though science court jurors would not always be right, the science court process would be helpful in tempering runaway groupthink in science, and detering the accession of extremist majoritarians like Ansel Keyes to positions of undisputed authority.

The reputation of science has taken a big public relations blow as a result of the unchallenged reign of groupthink on nutrition. Many members of the public have become skeptical—even cynical—regarding advice from official sources on health-related matters. If it turns out that the warming we experience in the future is only mild and that there was no need for the government to cause the price of electricity to skyrocket, the reputation of science won’t recover for a century. So instituting a science court should be thought of as insurance.

So Roger,
Where are these scientists with a reputation for objectivity, honesty and courage to be found? And who will decide who they are? If they have to be acceptable to both sides how will they be chosen? And suppose that only 3% of them decide that contrarian views have some merit would you accept that they are cranks who can be ignored by the BBC? Where is the cut-off line? If 8% think the contrarian views are ok do the BBC have to air their views?

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October 21, 2017 10:07 pm

AndyG55

“ll major scientific societies and the majority of scientists agree that global warming is real and man-made so does that mean that science has decided”

NO, only the far-left political flotsam that get to be “the committee” issue the statements.

Why do you think they try so hard to get to those positions.

Are you REALLY that naive?

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October 22, 2017 1:33 am

MarkW

Notice how the troll abandons his defense of science to jump to the standard, all the politicians agree with me so I must be right tactic.

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October 22, 2017 2:59 pm

MarkW

AndyG55, he’s something all right, but naive isn’t it.

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October 22, 2017 3:00 pm

Robert

Superb article. Consice and truthfull.
A work of art within todays ‘artificial reality’ based narrative.

1. Since ~1940, fossil fuel combustion has greatly increased and global temperature has declined or stayed ~constant for ~52 years, and increased for only ~25 years.

2. The year-to-year correlation of atm. CO2 with changes in global temperature is very high, but CO2 LAGS TEMPERATURE.

3. The rate of change dCO2/dt correlates strongly with global temperature, and its integral CO2 lags temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record.

4. Atmospheric CO2 ALSO lags temperature by hundreds or thousands of years in the ice core record. CO2 LAGS TEMPERATURE AT ALL MEASURED TIME SCALES.

5. There is no clear, measurable effect of CO2 on temperatures in any time scale. The evidence strongly suggests that the sensitivity of climate to increasing atm. CO2 is very low.

6. We know to a reasonable degree of confidence what drives global temperature and it is almost entirely natural and has an INSIGNIFICANT causative relationship from increasing atm. CO2:
– in sub-decadal time frames, the primary driver of global temperature is Pacific Ocean natural cycles, moderated by occasional cooling from major (century-scale) volcanoes;
– in multi-decadal time frames, the primary cause is solar activity;
– in the very long term, the primary cause is planetary cycles.

7. The next trend change in global temperature will probably be moderate naturally-caused global cooling, starting by ~2020-2030, due to reduced solar activity (as we published in 2002).

B. ALLEGATIONS OF INCREASING WILDER WEATHER ARE UNSUPPORTED BY THE EVIDENCE

8. There has been no increase in more extreme weather events. Alarmist allegations of wilder weather due to increased atmospheric CO2 , global warming, etc. are unsupported by the evidence.

C. INCREASING ATMOSPHERIC CO2 IS ENTIRELY BENEFICIAL TO HUMANITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT

9. Natural CO2 flux into and out of the atmosphere dwarfs humanmade CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion.

10. CO2 satellites show that the high concentrations of atm. CO2 are located in tropical and agricultural areas and the far North, and less so in industrialized areas.

12. Atm. CO2 is not alarmingly high; at ~400 ppm it is in fact far too low for optimal plant and crop growth. An optimal concentration of atm. CO2 would be ~1000-2000ppm (which is unlikely to result from human activity).

13. Atm. CO2 is, in the longer term, alarmingly low for the continued survival of carbon-based terrestrial life. Past continental glaciations (ice ages) were near-extinction events due to very low atm.CO2 and the near-shutdown of terrestrial photosynthesis.

D. A SLIGHTLY WARMER WORLD WOULD BE BENEFICIAL FOR BOTH HUMANITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT

14. Cool and cold weather kills many more people than warm or hot weather, even in warm climates.

15. Excess winter mortality in the human species totals about 2 million Excess Winter Deaths per year, and is high in both warm and cold climates. Excess Winter Mortality Rates are surprisingly high in countries with warmer climates, and are lowest in advanced countries that have cheap energy and modern home insulation and heating/cooling systems.

E. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

16. Adaptation is clearly the best approach to deal with the moderate global warming and cooling experienced in recent centuries.

17. Based on all the above evidence, alarmist allegations of catastrophic global warming, more extreme weather events, and other very negative consequences of increasing atmospheric CO2 are unsupported by the evidence.

18. A slightly warmer Earth with higher concentrations of atm. CO2 would be beneficial for both humanity AND the environment.

19. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of society. When politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die.

20. The misguided focus on global warming alarmism has caused society to squander many trillions of dollars of scarce global resources on foolish CO2 abatement programs that have driven up energy costs, reduced electric grid reliability, increased winter mortality, especially harmed the elderly and poor of the world, and diverted our attention and our resources from solving the real and pressing needs of humanity and the environment. That is the tragic legacy of false global warming alarmism.

Regards to all, Allan

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October 22, 2017 4:57 am

thallstd

Climate scientists, agency heads and others propping up the CAGW meme have had the luxury of not being held accountabe for anything. This report provides an opportunity to change that.

I think we should hold individuals accountable but give the agencies involved a chance to self-police, after informing them that the report will be subject to a “Red Team” challenge using the following process, or something similar.

Every single claim in the report must be endorsed in the report by at least one person. Any claim not endorsed will be removed from the report. Before the report is published, every claim will be subject to being challenged. Any claim challenged that is found to lack scientific support or exaggerate certainty results in the head of the agency issuing the claim and the individual endorser(s) losing his/her/their job(s), being sued for fraud and being banned forever from any work in or for the government or funded by our taxes.

It needn’t be judged based on who is right or wrong. If there is no supporting evidence or reasonable doubt and neither is conveyed in the report, the claim fails. Since most of the claims are not about climate science at all but are levied with no supporting evidence, or from improper methods, poorly managed data, invalidated models, misrepresentation of results etc, the determination of the challenge could be by a group devoid of climate scientists to avoid bias. Statisticians, mathematicians, engineers, physicists etc are all capable of weighing the arguments of both sides and determining whether a claim stands or not.

Give the report authors a couple of months to review their claims, solicit endorsers for each claim or remove the claim and amend the report with this review process and outcome known and the report might end up being much less alarmist.

The same approach could be taken with every AGW claim on every government agency website and every AGW position statement from every agency. NASA should be chastised for linking to the “97% consensus studies” as support for CAGW when not one of them found a 97% consensus on CAGW or used sound methodology, just as an example.

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October 22, 2017 6:50 am

richard verney

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October 22, 2017 7:16 am

richard verney

Climate alarmism has always been the meme du jour, even though no one knows anything about the subject:

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October 22, 2017 7:17 am

Pop Piasa

Mannipulation of the temperature record had not occurred yet. Those same players would call this report a falsey today.

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October 22, 2017 9:38 am

Pop Piasa

(replying to R Verney’s news clip)

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October 22, 2017 9:40 am

Vonboss

I am curious why a science report drafted by multiple world class federal science agencies is being called unduly and unscientific? If it is unscientific, than what does a scientific report look like? Perhaps the scientists who drafted this report are doing their jobs and their conclusion just not align with preconceived conclusion of this article’s author. It’s ok to have opinions, but I find it highly troubling when people attack the integrity of science and our scientific institutions when the results do not support their worldview. The purpose of doing science is to provide us with the raw, unbiased information to shape policy and world view.

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October 22, 2017 5:40 pm

thallstd

“The purpose of doing science is to provide us with the raw, unbiased information to shape policy and world view.”

Agreed. But if you believe that is the sate of today’s climate science s practiced by “multiple world class federal science agencies” you haven’t been paying attention.

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October 22, 2017 6:53 pm

Joel Snider

The press is crying about this one all over even as we speak. ‘EPA Silences Scientists’.

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